Southwestern Virginia sits on top of a magnificent system of limestone caves, some of which span multiple states. When I was growing up, one of our family vacations was going to Luray Caverns for the guided tour. We saw formations called fried eggs, drapery, soda straws. . .Luray had boardwalks, spotlights, vending machines, and, way in the back, creatures whose eyes had gone vestigial from serving no purpose. On the way out, we could get something cool at the gift shop. I usually got a magazine or book so I could look at pictures of the caves at home, and remember having been there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I enrolled at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg in the fall of 1980, I heard there was a caving club, and I went right over to sign up. Many of the cavers were geology students. In those days, cavers wore headlamps powered by something called carbide, which in practical terms meant that the light came from an open flame.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As with my similar adventures in mountaineering and rock climbing, I never learned to take the lead, but I tagged along on some nifty adventures. Not all of these adventures required actual caves. The buildings at Tech are built from stone set in concrete, with lots of great surfaces to practice your rock climbing skills. This activity was known as \u201cbuildering,\u201d and you stood a better chance of not getting caught if you went at night. I also followed a group into the underground steam tunnels that networked around the campus. At one point there was a grate to squeeze through (cavers love that stuff), and for some reason I set my helmet down very close to the space that I was struggling to get through. My hair briefly caught fire, and I screamed blue murder. My friends gathered around, swatting at my hair, hoping that the security guards above ground wouldn\u2019t hear me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sometimes caving involved actual rock climbing and\/or rappelling. One time a guy whose name has been lost to history invited several of us to practice these skills above ground. We did a fair amount of bushwhacking to get to the top of the chosen spot, and then this man spoke to us about knots. Now, I had been practicing my knots, and I knew that a bowline was one of the good ones for rappelling. However, Friend Rock Climber shrugged this idea off. \u201cI don\u2019t really know any knots,\u201d he said. \u201cI just do garbage knots.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The rest of us looked at each other, and I asked, \u201cwhat is a garbage knot?\u201d \u201cA garbage knot,\u201d he replied, \u201cis about a million granny knots all together. Sometimes I tie a garbage knot that is as big as a volleyball. They never fail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I don\u2019t remember what the others did, but I bushwhacked back down the way I had come, and spent the afternoon practicing my bowline.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Southwestern Virginia sits on top of a magnificent system of limestone caves, some of which span multiple states. When I was growing up, one of our family vacations was going to Luray Caverns for the guided tour. We saw formations called fried eggs, drapery, soda straws. . .Luray had boardwalks, spotlights, vending machines, and, way […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[329],"tags":[8,9,102,10,101],"class_list":["post-156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-travel-stories-and-other-flights-of-fancy","tag-caves","tag-caving","tag-luray-caverns","tag-virginia","tag-virginia-tech"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=156"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":157,"href":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156\/revisions\/157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}